January 22, 2006:

The temperature got down to –19° one day last week. Good Heavens! How can people exist in such savage weather? We went to Saskatoon on Friday to visit Lucille, and it hit about –25 Friday night, but since we didn’t get out of bed until ten, it didn’t make much difference to us. It was really quite pleasant in the city, with no wind and an occasional glimpse of the sun. As I write this Sunday evening, the temperature is up to about –8 and the forecast sounds like we are back into some balmy weather.

Saskatoon has a fair amount of snow, though not as much as we have. Residential streets still haven’t been cleared but the more heavily travelled streets are clear.

After my rant last week, Doreen’s sister, Lucille, got a phone call on Monday telling her to be at the hospital at 6:30 AM Tuesday for her surgery. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to be there to help her, but she made it on her own. Our family checked on her Tuesday evening and said all was well. We went to Saskatoon Friday, and found Lucille doing very well. She will likely be in hospital for a few more days. She is very impressed with the care she has been getting at City Hospital – says the staff are pleasant, cheerful, and helpful. Nice to hear.

We found a very pleasant dining experience in Saskatoon – Sardinia’s, on Idylwyld north. It’s on the east side of the street, in a strip mall between 36^th and 38^th streets. Good food, good service, reasonable prices, and nice surroundings. The manager, Alex, showed good taste when he bought his washroom vanity tops from our son, Lloyd’s, Beauty Craft Manufacturing.

We got a good bit of snow last Sunday, must have been six or eight inches. I went out and blew the driveways Monday morning - it’s a good thing we don’t get up too early in the morning, because the maintainer had been around and I was able to plow the ridge it leaves at the same time. There was a short but intense snowfall on Wednesday afternoon, too, that added another couple of inches.

Park trails are all good, as far as I know, but the Kelvington snowmobile club still hasn’t been able to groom its trails to the Park because of open water. Jack talks about snowmobiling over north-east of Kelvington and having to detour running water in several places. Ronnie Hirtle spoke of water running in the ditch in front of his place. (Did they say it was running uphill?)